Servicing your boiler at least once a year is much more than just a basic safety check. It also helps you ensure that it’s operating effectively, as well as making sure any seals and gaskets aren’t showing any early signs of wear and tear.

Can’t I just check the boiler myself?

Whilst it’s always advisable to keep an eye on your boiler throughout the year (and not just during the winter months, when most families tend to start relying on it more); it’s important to have your boiler checked and serviced by an approved Gas Safe registered engineer.

The Gas Safe Register contains a list of approved businesses that are legally authorised to carry out gas work. You can quickly check for your nearest engineer by following his link: https://www.gassaferegister.co.uk/find-an-engineer/

To ensure your boiler is fully covered, you also need to check the terms of your warranty since failure to have your boiler serviced every 12 months could lead to it being invalid. This can be extremely costly should anything go wrong. Remember, a faulty boiler will not only waste money on energy but could also start leaking poisonous carbon monoxide. Unfortunately, because gas is both colourless and scentless this can often be difficult, if not impossible, to detect.

What can I expect from a boiler service?

If you have any specific concerns about your boiler, or the way it’s performing, then always be sure to discuss these with your chosen engineer. Other than that, the service should include a check of the heat exchanger; together with other parts of the boiler such as the flue – just to make sure that everything’s operating as it should and above all, safely.

During the service, your engineer is likely to check the different components, clean, test and undertake pre-emptive faul spotting.

Are there different types of boilers and does this make any difference to the service?

Yes: boilers can either have an open flue (which is a vertical, chimney-style version) or a balanced flue (which are horizontal and will run through your wall).

Because most open-flued appliances can easily allow combustion products to enter your home when something goes wrong with the flue (or even the ventilation); they sadly tend to cause more deaths resulting from carbon monoxide. For this reason it’s advisable to get the boiler serviced every 12 months since problems such as these aren’t usually noticeable to the naked eye.
Balanced flues, on the other hand, tend to be much less critical since flue problems are not only much rarer but usually less serious. What’s more, because they draw clean fresh air from the outside the burner airways don’t attract lint accumulations of the usual household elements such as carpet fibres, pet hairs and so on. This also means that cleaning needs to be done less often that open-flued alternatives.

What do I need to look for in an engineer?

Other than being Gas Safe registered, always be sure you understand exactly what your engineer is going to do. Unfortunately, whilst some companies offer an “annual safety check” this doesn’t necessarily mean that your boiler will be serviced; so always be sure to ask what the service does (and doesn’t) include.

There’s no doubt that solar panels have taken off in a big way in the UK over recent years; in May 2017 a new record was set with electricity generated from solar panels exceeding nuclear power generation for the first time by producing a quarter of all the UK’s electricity .This is no accident, with solar panels continuing to expand at the rate they have done this record will continue to be broken as solar power continues to thrive.

Price

Once considered an accessory for the well off, home solar panels are now a common sight throughout the country. This has been spearheaded by government subsidies and incentives first put in place in 2010 to encourage more homeowners to invest in the technology.

Solar is seen as a key resource for the nations that have signed up to the Paris Climate Agreement and is now receiving major investment as a result. This has seen a rapid improvement in the technology and a reduction in price in a very short space of time. With home solar panels now costing between £3000 and £7000 they are much more readily available; a few years ago a similar setup would have cost up to £15,000. With little to no on-going maintenance costs throughout the solar panels lifespan they are proving to be a worthwhile investment for those that gone ahead with the installation.

Return on investment

With solar panels for your home it pays to go for the biggest that you can both afford and fit on your roof space. For example if you were to install a 4 kW setup it would cost around £4,500 – 7,000 and give you a return of around £70 a year from the governments feed in tariff. Savings on your bills could be as much as £200 a year meaning that overall, the panels will pay for themselves in 12 – 15 years.

Once the installation cost has been paid off everything you save or make is profit. With the current design life of solar panels at approximately 25 years that’s at least 10 years that you will be making money from your solar panels.

Some of the benefits that have seen an increase in solar panel installation include:

No planning permission is required

The larger your panels the better your return and the quicker you start making profit

With energy bills set to continue to increase these savings will likely only get bigger

A one off set up cost

No on-going maintenance costs

By 2020 it is predicted that 10 million homes in the UK will have solar panels installed, today the figure is around 1.5 million so the huge increase in projected growth is clear to see. With the UK currently installing solar panels faster than any other European country they now stand fourth in terms of the total number of solar panel systems installed to date. Despite the weather solar power is now seen as a reliable, cheap and environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuel production.

There are a lot of factors which can cause damp issues in your home, however you might be surprised to learn that your home insulation might be the cause of your damp problem. As bizarre as it might sound, your home insulation might well be making your home damp.

Making the right decision for your home

Purchasing your home is the largest financial investment you will probably make in your lifetime, so every decision that you make relating to the safety, health and happiness of your home is usually carefully researched and weighed up with all the pros and cons looked at. Despite the high level of concern with which most people approach the decisions about their home, making the right choice about the type of home insulation that is most suitable can often be problematic.

Do your research

Rather than simply making your home toasty and warm, cavity wall insulation can actually cause damp. Cavity wall insulation is praised for the savings you can make on your energy bills, however it can actually damage your home. Don’t let this put you off having cavity wall insulation installed in your home, just make sure you do your research first before you have it fitted into your home in order to check that your property would benefit from cavity wall insulation.

Catching it before it spreads

Loft and cavity wall insulation causing damp is neither a new nor an unusual phenomenon; a swift search online will show you this! But what can you do about it? If you’ve noticed mould starting to grow on your walls then this might be due to your loft and cavity wall insulation, which can cause condensation. If left untreated, this can eventually turn into black mould in your wardrobes, cupboards, behind your chest of drawers and on your carpets. Black mould doesn’t just look and smell unsightly, it is also hazardous to your health, particularly to sufferers of asthma.

Why it happens?

The science behind why loft and cavity wall insulation causes damp, is that warm air holds more water than cold air and because hot air rises it used to escape through your roof. Once you’ve had loft and cavity wall insulation, the hot air is no longer able to escape through your roof so all of the hot, and damp, water is forced back down into your house, on to your walls, carpets, clothes, furniture and wallpaper where it turns into condensation and eventually turns into mould. These places then become prime breeding grounds for mould to grow and thrive creating that recognisable ‘damp’ smell.

The answer:

The answer to this tricky problem is not just to avoid cavity wall and loft insulation like the plague and to wear more jumpers, instead the ventilation of your home needs to be thoroughly examined to make sure that you are making the right decision. Otherwise your anticipated annual saving on your household bill from the insulation could become overshadowed by costly damp treatments and dehumidifiers. Ventilating your home is vital to the health, wealth and happiness of your home so it is important that you have a careful and thorough inspection of your home before you jump into having any home insulation fitted in your home.